


Four Winters: III

by Linden



Series: Four Winters [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:17:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Sam knows he can't stay, and Dean is certain he'll never go.</p><p>Rated for pretty boys being naughty in 1 and 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Sam is eighteen, Dean twenty-two.

**September 2001**

_Wherein Sam is contemplating college, and Dean is contemplating Sam._

Looking around their battered kitchen as he flipped sandwiches on the stove, Dean was going to go ahead and decide that the house had seen better days.

Better months, even.

Possibly the better part of a century.

They’d fetched up here in Detroit earlier in the week, on the third floor of an old multi-family home in the south part of the city. The bones of the place were still lovely—wooden floors, a hidden cupboard, built-in shelves his brother had already filled up with library books and the few battered paperbacks they owned; there was even a friggin’ _windowseat_ , which Sammy had curled up in like a delighted cat their first afternoon here, long legs folded up against his chest, chin resting on his knees. And that was good. ‘Course, on the flip side of good, there was also rust in the pipes and rot in the walls and probably enough lead in the peeling paint to drop a rhino, because it had to have been fifty years or so since the last time a person who actually gave a damn about the place had owned it. But for the at-least-a-month-boys that their father was planning to park them all here, it was as cheap as a motel room and ten times the size, and it had a tolerable roaches-to-mice-to-people ratio, besides. It would do. Their father wasn’t wild about it, was certain that Dean should have been able to find something even cheaper, something safer, should have looked through the classifieds more carefully, should have done _better_ , but John’s disappointment was nothing new, and for once Dean wasn’t much troubled by it. He’d done plenty of looking, and he’d found the cheapest, safest place he could in the part of the city that meant Sam could enroll in the best public high school Detroit had, and so as far as he was concerned, it was a job well done.

He heard the front door open and close in the hall below, and then his brother’s familiar footfalls were coming up the stairs. Dean slid both sandwiches out of the pan and onto the rack in the hot oven, added another chunk of butter and put two others on to fry. He’d been making Sam grilled-cheese-and-bacon sandwiches for an afternoon snack on the first day of the school year since the kid was five (sometimes in actual kitchens, several times on hot plates, and once in a hot _pot_ , an accomplishment of which his twelve year old self had been very proud) and if Sam were fonder these days of salad than he was of bacon, and inclined to natter on about the terror of high fructose whatever-the-hell-it-was when Dean tossed a loaf of cheap bread into their cart at the store, well—the kid could lump it, for one afternoon. Dean could count on one hand the number of traditions they had that did not involve some sort of firearms, and this was the last year he and Sam would have this one.

‘Dean?’

‘In here, Sammy,’ he called, voice echoing a little in the near-empty space. The place had come furnished, so to speak, with a couple of card tables, four folding chairs, a crap couch, and two queen mattresses without the benefit of either box springs or bedframes, and it wasn’t like they’d had much to add to it. Dean had only been half-kidding when he’d asked Sam if he wanted to go steal a television the other day.

He heard the sound of Sam’s shoes coming off and his bag hitting the floor, listened to the shuffle of footsteps across the ruined floors through the living and dining rooms behind him, and then there was the creak of linoleum at his back and slim arms sliding around his ribs and a long lean body pressed against him, smelling of clean sweat and sandalwood soap. Dean could feel his cock give an interested twitch in his jeans at all this warm solid _Sam_ he suddenly had wrapped around him. ‘Hey,’ he said.

Sam bit a lazy kiss into the skin below his jaw. ‘Hey,’ he murmured, tucking his nose into the crook of Dean’s neck and pulling him back against his chest, and the possessiveness of it kicked Dean’s pulse up a couple of notches, fed something hungry and sweet and wanting in his gut. He could feel Sam’s smile against his skin as the kid looked down at the stove. ‘Dude. Seriously?’

Dean flipped the sandwiches in the fry pan. ‘What?’

‘Tell me those are not grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches.’

‘First day of school, kiddo. The hell else would they be?’

‘Dean, you do _realize_ I’m not in third grade anymore, right? I mean, you got that memo.’

Dean could hear the sweetness beneath the teasing, but he put an elbow in the kid’s ribs anyway, because there was only so much sass a man could allow his baby brother, and it wouldn’t do to let Sam forget that. ‘Get off me and make yourself useful, Frances,’ he ordered, and Sam grinned and bit gently at his neck again before he let him go, ‘cause the brat never really had gotten over his damn vampire fetish. ‘Beers are in the fridge. You wanna eat outside?’

 _Outside_ was the tiny rundown balcony off their tiny rundown living room, which looked out onto their badly rundown, overgrown front yard. Sam hauled two of their folding chairs and the card table from the kitchen out onto it and snagged four beers from the fridge; Dean finished up their sandwiches, piled all of them onto one plate, grabbed the bag of chips off the counter, and followed him out; and they settled in at the table and started in on their food, watching a bunch of kids play a game of baseball in the lot across the street and listening to a couple next door scream at one another in Russian. It felt oddly home-y. Crappy as their neighborhood might have been—and it was, most definitely, crappy—the afternoon was beautiful all the same, warm for September, and the wind caught and whooshed through the branches of the scraggly pine beside them, which Dean was already feeling rather proprietary toward. And that was ridiculous, and he was _aware_ of that, but it was true, all the same. Motel rooms were easy to leave, no matter how many days—weeks, sometimes—they spent in one; houses, on the other hand, sank their hooks into his possessive little soul the first morning he shuffled around barefoot on scarred wooden floors and cooked Sam breakfast on an actual stove, and every single time it hurt to tear himself away. He wasn’t gonna want to go, whenever John decided they were done here. He knew that already, three days in.

They ate their way through a bag of russet potato chips and a sandwich apiece as Sam told him about his day, occasionally gesticulating with a chip or his sandwich or his beer bottle for emphasis. Dean didn’t know what there was about a science lab with a _freakin’ Eppendorf microcentrifuge, Dean_ to get all excited over, or, you know, what in the hell a microcentrifuge even was, but that was okay. Sam sounded content; Sam sounded _happy_ , and it struck him, suddenly, painfully, somewhere between listening to his baby brother ramble on about the Eppen-whatever-the-hell-it-was and Emily Dickinson, that this was the last year Sammy was going to have this, the chance to spend his days tucked up with poems and plays and math and history and whatever the hell else it was they taught these days to kids who didn’t have the first damn clue what evil was, never mind how to kill it. By the time Dean had dropped out as a senior, he hadn’t minded leaving; save for those few months at Sonny’s, he’d never really had time for academics anyway, not between hunting and taking care of Sam and doing his best to watch out for their father. But Sam . . . Sam loved school, had ever since he was a little boy, when he’d come trotting excitedly back to their crappy room or house or apartment or trailer to show Dean the stickers on his tests or the A’s on his report card, and it was going to be hard on him to leave it. And some days Dean resented the hell out of the fact that he had to, that their lives meant his brother would never be able to go to college, because he was smarter than anyone Dean knew—he was smarter than any _three people_ Dean knew—and he thought Sam probably would be really good at the whole university thing, what with the books and the coffee and the all-nighters in the library. The frat parties and drinking and, y’know, _fun_ , probably not so much, but the geeky stuff? Kid would have that sewn up.

Most days, though, he was just enough of a selfish bastard to be glad that Sam was never gonna leave him.

He watched him, quietly, as the kid paused in his run-down of everything he’d done, seen, and eaten since leaving Dean that morning to munch his way happily through another sandwich. The late afternoon sun was sliding over Sam’s skin like water—over his skin, over his stupidly beautiful hands, over the bones of his bare feet, where he had his ankles crossed now on the balcony rail—and Dean wondered, idly, how many pretty little high school girls had fallen in love with him today, how many boys had wanted to find out if that pretty mouth felt as soft and sweet and innocent as it looked. Sam was wearing a soft grey tee Dean was almost sure had been black once, three owners and a thousand washes ago, and the jeans he had on, loose on his slim hips, were Dean’s; but even in Goodwill and hand-me-downs the kid was still beautiful, and Dean was suddenly prickly-hot with the knowledge that after they were done with their food and finished with their beer, and after they’d lazed about for awhile out here in the warm afternoon light, he was going to push his little brother back inside and spread him out naked on the mattress in the dusty sunlight of their room, was going to take his time with him, and put his mouth on every inch of that beautiful skin before he finally fucked him, nice and hard, just the right side of rough. He shifted a little in his seat, enjoying the slow burn. It had been months since they’d had time for this—time for _waiting_ , for knowing that they were going to have more than ten minutes in the bathroom of a gas station or truck stop or bar—and it was hot and frustrating and pretty damn awesome at once. The next time Sam looked over at him, every last one of Dean’s thoughts must have been showing in his face, because the kid’s cheekbones and ears went suddenly, sweetly pink, and Christ almighty, Dean was never, ever going to get tired of the fact that his brother, who could and did routinely run that shockingly filthy mouth of his dry in bed, still sometimes blushed like a girl.

 _So fuckin’ pretty_ , he thought, and didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until Sam threw a potato chip at his head. Dean caught it in his mouth, because he was just that awesome, and Sam’s subsequent grin was wry and bright and helplessly amused.

‘Ass,’ he said fondly, reaching for his second beer.  Dean smiled back at him, lazy and slow; Sam made a great show of ignoring him in favor of his beer and the kids’ game across the street, but there was still a faint flush across his cheeks, and Dean could see that grin still tugging now and again at the corner of his brother’s mouth. Content, amused, and aroused, he popped the cap off the last beer and settled back in his chair, and they drank and Sam ate in comfortable silence for a little while longer, both of them pretending they weren’t already half-hard in their jeans.

Sam polished off the last of the sandwiches with a happy sigh, looked mournfully at the empty plate. ‘Those were really good,’ he said.

Dean shrugged. ‘Yeah, well. Last year for ‘em, kiddo.’ He grinned at him. ‘Maybe next year they can be our ‘hey, we went on a hunt and nothing tried to strangle Sam’ food. Probably have ‘em as often.’

He expected a laugh or a bitchface or another potato chip to the face, but Sam said nothing, just chewed on his lower lip and looked down at the beer bottle he held, picking absently at the label with his thumb. Dean frowned. ‘Sammy?’

Sam pulled in a careful breath. ‘Dean, I . . . about next year, I—’

There was the sudden, unexpected sound of a key turning in their locks, and then their apartment door was opening in the living room behind them.

Sam looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘I thought—’

‘He was,’ Dean agreed, tightly, because John had said this morning that he’d be gone to Grand Rapids until tomorrow. _Tomorrow,_ damn it, which meant Dean was supposed to have this whole afternoon and evening and night alone with Sam, and now—

‘Boys?’

 _Shit_.

Sam was already shutting down, the bright animation of his face fading along with the sweet wicked promise of his flush, leaving him looking wary and wintry and defiant, like he almost always did around their father these days, like he had ever since last year, when he’d gained five inches and fifteen pounds of muscle and no longer had to tilt his head back to meet John Winchester’s eyes. Dean held his gaze across the table for one long, desperately unhappy moment, before, ‘We’re out here, Dad,’ he called, and a moment later their father was in the open door behind them, in a tee shirt and jeans with his duffel still slung over one shoulder. He looked tired and scruffy, and mildly disreputable; he hadn’t bothered to shave or shower before leaving that morning. ‘Hey,’ Dean said. ‘What happened with Grand Rapids?’

John pushed a hand back through his hair. ‘Cormac’s girls were already on it. Said they’ll call if they need help.’ He sighed. ‘Waste of goddamned time. You get anywhere on the Avilov case this morning?’

‘Yeah,’ Dean replied. He nodded toward the paper-strewn couch inside at his father’s back, trying to tamp down the resentment swirling hot and unwanted in his gut. The case was important, and he _knew_ that, but a warm strong pulse of _SamSamSam_ was still thudding in his veins, and he didn’t—‘There’s an old factory complex off 94 that’s been mostly abandoned for the last forty years or so,’ he said, forcing himself to focus. ‘I think that’s probably where they planted the poor bastard. Maybe on the grounds, maybe in the walls; he disappeared just as they were building the damn thing, so who the hell knows. I drove out for a look this afternoon, but there’s enough electrical wires out there to fuck up the EMF readings ten times over.’

‘What kind of space are we talking?’

‘Forty acres of land, and the main plant’s a mile long. Seriously. Mile long. That doesn’t count the couple dozen other buildings.’

John squeezed wearily at the bridge of his nose. ‘So there’s no way to find the body.’

‘Not without both a backhoe and a shitload of C-4.’ Dean paused. ‘I’m game, by the way,’ he added, and though John just looked at him, wearily, Dean caught the edge of Sam’s reluctant smile. He shrugged. ‘No. There’s no way to find the body, Dad, not with what we got. And even if we did find _a_ body, we’re not gonna know it’sour Casper’s, not for sure. That place is an easy dump. If this Avilov guy is out there, he ain’t the only one.’

‘You sure his bones are there?’ their father asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Jesus, Dean, then what—’

‘The old reports say he was killed in his house and his body moved after,’ Dean said. ‘And his house was only about half a mile from the thing when it was being built back in nineteen-hundred-somethin’, so it—’

‘—makes sense,’ John finished, nodding tiredly, and sighed again.  ‘It does. Sorry, kiddo. Didn’t mean to jump on you.’ He scrubbed a hand across his scruffy face. ‘All right. Shit. Let me get cleaned up, and we’ll think about it. We got coffee?’

Dean quirked a smile at him. ‘We always got coffee.’ He pushed himself to his feet. ‘I’ll put a pot on. Sammy, you gonna want some?’

Sam shook his head and tipped his head back to finish his beer; Dean tore his eyes away from the long sweet curve of his brother’s throat before he did something stupid like leaned down and licked it, because getting beaten to hell by his own father was very much not on his to-do list this particular afternoon. Going in, he heard John say something to Sam, and Sam’s quiet, terse reply; he couldn’t make out the words, but they weren’t immediately followed by shouting, cursing, or the sound of either his brother or father going off the balcony, so Dean was going to count it a win. These days he took his victories where he could find them.

Such victories did not, unfortunately, include good coffee, but it was at least _cheap_ coffee—there’d been an ancient stove-top percolater hiding in the back of a kitchen cabinet when they’d moved in, and while it took fifteen friggin’ minutes to make a pot of joe, it was cheaper and more convenient than going out to buy cups of the damn stuff all the time, and actual coffee makers were the sorts of things Dean suspected even the most bored, blank-eyed cashier at Walmart would notice if you tried to hide beneath your coat. He’d just gotten it filled and the gas turned on beneath it when John came in and headed into the back bedroom, and a moment later Sam was wrapped around him again, warm and slender and solid, mouthing gently up the side of his neck. The white heat of _wanting_ that flared up again inside him was almost painful in its intensity. He could hear their father on the other side of the wall, rummaging out clean clothes and a towel from his duffel before he went down the hall to the bath, floorboards creaking beneath his feet.

‘Sam,’ Dean said softly, in what was meant to be a warning. But Sam didn’t back off, just ran his big hands up and down over Dean’s sides, gently, persuasively, until Dean leaned back against him, just a little, his body moving utterly without permission, and Sam let one hand slide down over Dean’s hip to cup the warm bulge of his cock. He was still soft—if there were a faster way to kill a boner than _Dad_ , he didn’t know it—but Sam was stroking him now through the worn denim of his jeans, his other hand splayed wide across Dean’s stomach, hot through the thin cotton of his tee, and yeah, soft was not gonna be a problem for long.

Their father turned on the shower down the hall.

‘Please,’ Sam whispered, so softly, mouth warm and wet against Dean’s ear.

Dean would realize, later, that his mistake had been saying ‘Sam’ again rather than ‘No,’ because half a heartbeat later Sam was pulling him back away from the stove and turning him (and Jesus, his baby brother had gotten strong); was pushing him up against the wall with lean hands on his hips and kissing him, hard and desperate and deep. The hands Dean lifted to push his brother off of him— _not with Dad here, never with Dad here; it was the first goddamned rule they had_ —ended up tangled in his hair instead, though he wasn’t clear on exactly how that had happened; he wasn’t clear on much besides the feel of Sam mapping every inch of his mouth with his tongue, of long clever fingers sliding along the waistband of his jeans.  His fly was undone before he realized what Sam was doing.

_Holy fucking Christ, no._

He tore his mouth free to say precisely that, but his brother was already dropping to his knees, pushing Dean’s jeans off his hips and tugging the waistband of his boxers down over his cock to tuck beneath his heavy balls, and, ‘Sam,’ Dean managed, half a heartbeat before Sam put his mouth on him, a long steady lick and then hot slippery suction that made Dean dizzy with the rush of blood to his cock, and his head knocked back against the wall and his fingers slid into Sam’s hair before his brain had a chance to finish processing just how bad an idea this happened to be. Something embarrassingly like a whimper was trying to work its way free from his throat, because his body was apparently deciding not to sensibly translate Sam blowing him with their father down the hall as _suicidal_ but instead as _really impossibly hot_ ; he could feel his toes curl against the linoleum as he hardened in his brother’s pretty mouth. ‘Sam,’ he moaned softly, uncertain whether it were in protest or encouragement or both, because they couldn’t do this, _they could not fucking do this_ , except that they could, clearly, because Sam was opening his throat into a perfect crushing vice around Dean’s cock and swallowing him down, and it felt so stupidly, _stupidly_ good that Dean’s head hit the wall again, hands tightening in his brother’s hair as he struggled to keep his hips still. _Fuck. Fuck fuck fucking fuck_—

He looked down to find Sam looking steadily up at him as he worked, pink lips stretched wide around his cock, hazel eyes dark in the shadows of the kitchen, stray sunlight glinting off the silver ring on Dean’s right hand where it was fisted in his hair.  Dean traced shaking fingers along his brother’s jawline with his left, stroked a high cheekbone with his thumb, squeezed his eyes shut against a white shock of pleasure as Sam did something Dean was fairly sure was illegal with his tongue and the back of his throat at once, and the soft _sounds_ the kid was making, Christ—

It was another minute, maybe two, before Sam tightened his grip on Dean’s narrow hips and tugged, pulling him insistently closer, deeper; Dean wrapped his hands around the back of his brother’s head to keep him close and still and couldn’t quite stifle the soft groan that got dragged out of him as he finally gave into the urge to thrust, needy and deep. Sam’s face was flushed and his eyes were wet and there was spit running slick down his chin, but he was rubbing calloused palms encouragingly up and down the outside of Dean’s thighs, his touch warm even through the worn denim, lighting up sparks beneath Dean’s skin, and as the water shut off down the hall with a shriek of rusty pipes Dean sank his teeth into his lower lip to stay quiet, because he couldn’t—he wanted—

‘Sammy,’ he whispered, broken, lip still caught between his teeth, and Sam ran his hands up the backs of his thighs to his ass, kneading firmly in time with Dean’s thrusts, and it wasn’t half a minute more before Dean’s fingers clenched and his eyes fluttered shut and he was coming down Sam’s throat on a stuttering, strangled sigh, knees going weak where he stood. _Fuck. Fuck_. _Fuck_. His hands went lax in his little brother’s hair, his head tipping back again against the wall as he tried to remember how to breathe; Sam held him gently in his mouth through the aftershocks, nursing him through with just enough warmth and soft suction to coax out one more quiet whine and weak spurt of semen, to draw out the end of his orgasm into something long and sleepy and sweet. He finally pulled off with a soft, wet _pop,_ licked Dean clean and tucked him carefully, tenderly in, tugged his jeans back up over his hips, did up his fly. He stayed on his knees, hands sliding down Dean’s legs in an easy caress, long fingers curling around his calves, forehead pressed against one hipbone, breath soft and swift and unsteady; Dean could feel him trembling, could see the curve of his hard cock pressing against the worn denim of his jeans. Later, he would blame the orgasm for making him so stupid. Because although he could hear the buzz of an electric razor now down the hall, and knew that John was going to be shaved and dressed and out of the bathroom in three minutes, maybe four, he was tugging Sam to his feet and snaking an arm tight around his waist and pulling him in close anyway, was pushing a thigh between his brother’s legs and letting Sam fist his hands in Dean’s shirt and hide his face against Dean’s neck and grind against him, breath warm and damp against his skin. Dean dug strong fingers into the soft places between Sam’s ribs, gripping him tight, the way he liked; Sam bit into his shoulder, hard, to muffle a startled moan, and the thought of the bruise it would leave sent a white-hot bolt down Dean’s spine.

He slid a hand up Sam’s back to thread his fingers through the kid’s hair and pull his head back to get at the soft skin just below his jaw, wanting desperately to mark him up and regretting that he couldn’t. Sam’s slim hips were already starting to lose their rhythm. ‘C’mon,’ Dean murmured, mouthing along his jaw. ‘C’mon, Sammy.’ He felt his brother’s muscles lock up half a heartbeat after he heard their father shut his razor off down the hall, and then the kid was coming helplessly in his jeans, on a soft, wounded sound that would have had Dean hard again in half a heartbeat had he not just come two minutes ago. Panting, Sam slumped against him, tremors still racing beneath his skin, face pressed against the side of Dean’s throat and hands still tangled in his shirt; Dean kept an arm around him to keep him on his feet, kept his head cradled protectively close, thick fingers buried in his hair. He could feel Sam’s mouth moving against his skin as though it were something in a dream, heard the bathroom door open. Didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Sam was an utter mess and the kitchen smelled of sex and their father was fifteen feet away, ten, and Dean still could not bring himself to let go of his brother. ‘Boys, I’ve got a couple of calls to make,’ John called, floorboards creaking as he went into one of the bedrooms. ‘You mind bringing me a cup of that coffee when it’s done, Dean?’

Dean swallowed. He breathed. Sam was sucking gently, silently, on the sweet spot just below his ear. ‘Yeah Dad,’ he replied, voice steady, stroking his brother’s hair. He listened as their father closed the door behind him. Sam snuggled impossibly closer. He was barely half an inch shorter than Dean was (and Dean had the resigned, weary suspicion that the little fucker wasn’t done growing yet, either), but he could still somehow make himself seem small when he was cuddled up against him like this, and one of these days Dean was going to figure out how the hell he did that and stop him, because it was a freakin’ unfair advantage, is what it was. He was aiming for stern when he spoke; he missed it by a mile, and his fingers were still gentle in his brother’s hair.

‘First fuckin’ rule, Sammy,’ he murmured.

Sam nodded. ‘I know.’ Dean bit the inside of his mouth against how hoarse the kid sounded. ‘Dean, I know; I just . . .’ He pressed his face into the curve of Dean’s throat, let go of his shirt to wind slim arms around his ribs. ‘I was thinking about you all day,’ he said, voice muffled. ‘Thinking about _this_ all day, and I just . . . I wanted you.’ His breath was warm against Dean’s skin. ‘Please don’t be mad.’

Tucked up against him, Sam sounded exactly the same as he had when he’d been five, looking up doe-eyed and tender-mouthed after spilling Dean’s juice or drooling on Dean’s pillow or waking Dean up at 2 AM because there’d been a funny noise outside their motel room window, and Dean was still as defenseless against that clingy, soft-voiced baby brother as he had been as a kid. Sighing, he ghosted his mouth across his brother’s temple and let him stay cradled warm and close for a long minute more, then forced himself to give the kid a gentle shove to get him moving, because their father wasn’t going to be on the phone forever and they had already played fast and entirely too damn loose with their luck. Sam looked up at him through his bangs, those slanted, stupidly beautiful eyes sated and soft and just a little bit scared; Dean pushed his floppy hair back off his face and cradled his jaw, briefly, against one palm, and watched the nervousness bleed out of his brother’s gaze. ‘Go get cleaned up,’ he managed, softly, and Sam leaned in to kiss him again, once, hands settling warm and tight and possessive on Dean’s hips, and then he nipped sharply on his lower lip and was gone.

The smell of coffee, bitter and strong, was starting to rise from the stove. Dean knew he needed to open the windows all the same, needed to let the breeze blow through before his father wandered in, because _why does the kitchen smell like semen, Dean?_ would, he felt, be a perfectly reasonable question for the man to ask, and it was not one he had any intention of needing to answer. He stayed where he was anyway, and looked, unseeing, at the cracked ceiling overhead.

He didn't know what to do with Sam.

And that was a first, really, because all his life he'd known what to do with Sam. Never had to think about it; never had to question it; what Sam needed, Dean gave him, and that was as simple and true as water being wet, the sky being blue, and Anna Nicole being one smokin' babe. But— _We could leave,_ his brother had first said, two years ago now, hesitant and soft, both of them tangled up in the bed they’d shared at Bobby’s since they were kids. Sixteen and a half,, Sam had still been light-boned as a boy then, a few inches under six feet, cuddled into Dean’s side with his head tucked to his shoulder, every bit as clingy a baby possum as he’d been as a toddler. Dean liked to bitch a lot about Sam’s preference for cuddling, but privately he loved it when his little brother tucked himself in so close, loved the feel of the two of them together, would have gladly cracked open his own ribcage and pulled Sam inside if he could. _Just you and me, Dean_ , Sam had murmured, tugging sleepily at the amulet resting on Dean’s chest _. We could—we could find someplace with a garage like Jeremiah’s, you know? And you could work and I could go to school and we’d—we could fix up a house, or something, like the one in Wyoming._ He’d sighed, half-asleep, plucked at the blankets tucked around them. _We could buy sheets._

Dean had smiled into the dark and said nothing, thinking him no more serious than he’d been when he’d declared as a kid that he wanted to go to the moon, to Saturn, and to Canada, but he’d said it again four months later, already two inches taller, both of them watching a corpse burn in an open grave outside Augustus, their breath frosting in the bitter winter air. He'd said it at that grave outside Augustus, and he'd said it near Raleigh, and in Woods Hole, and in Steamboat Springs, and in Beaufort and Sedona and Havre de Grace and Ketchum and a dozen other towns and cities across the States. Dean’s mental map of the country had once been held together by memories of good diners and good roads and women with generous curves and boys with wicked smiles, but these days it was memories of Sam—on the road, in their bed, sharing a warm Coke with him on the curb of a crap gas station in a crap town as they waited for their father to finish fiddling with the car—telling him that they didn’t have to do this forever. That Sam didn’t want to do this forever. That Sam didn’t want to do this _now_. The kid hadn’t said a word about it for nearly a year, not since the vicious fight they’d had about it after a fucked-up hunt in Jicarilla, and Dean frankly still couldn’t think about that too closely about that without a punch of nausea to his gut. But he could still taste the words on his brother’s tongue every time Sam kissed him, could still feel them in his hands, and he didn’t . . . he didn’t know what in the hell to do with that, with any of it.

Sam loved him. Dean knew that. Knew, too, that the kid was never really gonna up and leave him, anymore than Dean would have ever abandoned him for a life with Sonny; he was as certain of that as he was of sunrise. But Dean didn’t know how to handle the choice his brother was pushing him toward—didn’t know how to make it, wasn’t certain he could survive it, not if it were something that put Sam on one side and left their father and their mission and whatever the hell it was that had killed their mother still running loose in the world on the other. He loved Sam more than anything, _anything_ , that he knew, because his little brother was bright and badass and brave and beautiful and _good_ , sweet to his bones in a way that Dean had marveled at for eighteen years, and Dean would have willingly torn his own still-beating heart out of his chest in a moment if it would have made him happy. But no matter how much Sammy wanted out, Dean couldn’t just abandon their job, couldn't abandon his mother's memory, his responsibility as her son. And he certainly couldn’t just abandon John, for Chrissakes, because he loved his father almost as much as he did Sam, and the thought of just leaving him, alone, with nothing more than a bottle of whiskey and his memories and every evil, creeping thing out there in dark— 

The coffee bubbled, gently, on the stove. Dean stayed leaning against the wall for a long moment more, thinking of the warmth of Sam’s mouth on his skin.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am working under the assumption here that back in 2001, Stanford still had the schedule of mid-October deadline for early action and mid-December notification of acceptance. Also, that, you know, Sam applied early action. Which he needs to do here only because of the whole "winter" thing.

**October 2001**

_Wherein Sam is panicky about having sent off an early action app to Stanford, and Dean doesn’t have a clue._

By the time mid-October rolled in, cool and bright, Dean and Sam were in South Dakota, and their father was in the wind. A call to John’s cell had startled all three of them over supper in Detroit; twenty minutes and a phone call to Bobby later, they were on the road, and by morning they were rolling up to Singer Salvage, where Bobby was waiting on his porch drinking coffee in the early light and looking as rumpled and grumpy as ever. The ride hadn’t been a pleasant one. Dean had tried not to be pissed that John was refusing to tell them who had called, or where he was planning to go, or why he was dropping them at Bobby’s before he went; Sam—who had been in an inexplicably foul, jittery temper for two weeks, one day clingy and the next distant and the third itching for a fight (with him, with Dad, with the goddamned _neighbors_ )—had decided that keeping his mouth shut would require much too much effort for a ten and a half hour drive, and so spent the nine hundred some odd miles to Sioux Falls sniping at the man from the backseat, until their father had snapped and the two of them had both been shouting and Dean had been contemplating how very peaceful it would be to throw himself out of the car and onto the highway, because at least then he would be in the hospital and hopped up on painkillers, and he wouldn’t have to listen to this shit. He was not particularly unhappy to see Sam jump out of the back and storm off into Bobby’s sea of cars almost before theirs came to a halt, and though God knew he was worried about their father heading off into who-the-hell-knew-what-or-where with no goddamned _backup_ , he couldn’t say he was particularly unhappy to see him take off, either, once he’d spoken briefly to Bobby and told Dean to take care of his brother and promised to be back inside of six weeks. Dean rubbed wearily at his aching temples as the Impala got swallowed up in the glare of the early sun. He loved John and Sam beyond reason, he really did, but sometimes he just wanted—lovingly, mind you, and with all possible care—to hit them with a brick.

Bobby came up beside him in the yard while the crunch of gravel beneath his baby’s tires and the purr of her engine faded in the still morning air. Dean braced himself for the man to ask why Sam had felt the sudden need to go commune with two acres of rust heaps, or why their father’s jaw had been locked tight enough to shatter, but he just stood quietly at his shoulder for a minute, steam curling up from the mug he held, as reassuringly familiar in his trucker hat and flannel as anything in Dean’s world.

‘So,’ he said at last. ‘I got a bed upstairs with your name on it, a four-barrel carb that needs rebuilding, and a cracked engine block to fix. Take your pick, kid.’

Dean blinked at him. Bobby’s face was wry and fond, and his mouth quirked to half a smile as he sipped at his coffee. ‘Or you can stand here all day worrying about those two ornery idjits you just spent ten hours cooped up with in a car,’ he offered. ‘That’s okay, too.’

Dean snorted out a startled laugh at that despite himself, the tense knots across his shoulders starting to loosen, and when Bobby spoke again it was with the same gruff, easy affection the younger man had relied on all his life. ‘There's coffee and bagels in the kitchen. Eggs too, if you feel like cooking. Get some shut-eye or come find me out back once you’ve got some grub in you.' He clapped him once on the shoulder, face softening just a little around his eyes. 'Good to have you kids here,' he told him, and then took himself off in the direction of his work shed. Dean looked back down the drive to where his father had disappeared for a moment longer, then sighed and went jogging across the yard toward the porch steps. He paused to scratch Cohen's ears where the old mutt was snuffling about in the grass, and went in, gratefully, to the warm quiet dark of the house. 

Bobby’s kitchen smelled like it always did—herbs and coffee and Old Spice and whiskey. Dean closed the door behind him and felt something settle in him a little at the scent of it, one as recognizable as the gun oil and sage and leather of their car, as the salt-and-sweetness of Sam's skin. It wasn't . . . it didn't smell like  _home_ , precisely, but it was as close as anything he knew, and the last of the tension in his back and neck and shoulders started to drain out, easy and slow, as he puttered about at the counter, set a place for himself at the table, rummaged out cream cheese and juice from the fridge. Breakfast was good, featuring as it did both Bobby’s jet-fuel coffee and a complete lack of people shouting in his ear, and he sat quietly for a little awhile after he finished eating, eyes closed, head resting on his folded arms, just enjoying the warmth and the comfortable, not-quite-silence of the house: the hum of the fridge kicking on, the ticking of the old clock in the living room, the whisper-rush of the heat coming on in the vents. He had no recollection whatsoever of falling asleep, but suddenly there was a tentative hand rubbing along his shoulder, which his body catalogued as _SammysafeSam_ before his reflexes ever had a chance to propel him out of the chair. He hadn’t heard the door. He lifted his head to look at his little brother, in battered jeans and battered trainers and an old Henley and flannel that had been too small for him three months ago. They had to either do laundry or hit a Walmart, he thought absently, automatically; he’d need to check Sam’s duffel to see.

In the dim kitchen the kid's eyes were dark, and worry was stamped plain across the sharp planes of his face. ‘You okay?’ he asked, softly.

Dean shrugged his hand off and stood. ‘I’m fine.’ He picked up his mug and plate and knife to ferry them over to the sink, where Bobby’s breakfast dishes were stacked neatly in the wash bucket, detoured to grab the fry pan on the stove, turned on the tap. He scrubbed a hand across his face. His eyes felt gritty, and his joints were cold and his head hurt; he hadn’t meant to sleep, though his watch told him he couldn’t have been out for more than fifteen minutes.

‘You sure?’ Sam asked after a moment.

Dean snorted back a laugh as he started in on the dishes. ‘I’m tired, Sam. Was sort of hard to sleep in the car with you screamin’ like a fuckin’ banshee.’

He felt his brother’s flinch from halfway across the kitchen, even if he couldn’t see it, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, ‘cause yeah, all right, that had come out a hell of a lot harsher than he’d meant it to. ‘I didn’t—’ Sighing, he propped his clean coffee mug in the drying rack, braced both of his wet hands on the edge of the sink for a moment and let his head drop, wearily. ‘Sorry, little brother,’ he said, quietly.

‘Dean, I—I was just—’

‘Pissed at Dad. I know that, Sammy. I . . .' He paused for a minute, searching for words, failed to find them, and sighed again before sinking his hands back into the soapy water. 'Just come dry these for me, all right?’

Sam shuffled over, silently, and fished out a dishtowel from the drawer beside the stove. Neither of them said anything else, and for a few minutes the only sounds were the water splashing over Dean’s hands in the sink, and the clink of plates as Sam tucked them back in the cabinet, and the sharp rattle of silverware in the drawer.

‘You want me to make you some eggs?’ Dean finally asked, gruffly, when they were done. He tugged the towel free from Sam’s hands to dry his own.

Sam shook his head. 'I’m not hungry.’

‘You haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday,’ he said, because the kid hadn’t; he’d taken exactly one look at the (admittedly dodgy) Mexican takeout their father had brought back the previous evening in Michigan and announced he would rather die of starvation than e coli, thanks ever so. He’d been in the process of dining on a Coke and stubbornness when John’s phone had gone off. ‘Bobby’s got bagels if you don’t want eggs.’

‘I just came in for some coffee.'

'Yeah, well, you're not havin' coffee without puttin' some food in your stomach first.'

'Dean, for Chrissakes, I'm not _five_ —'

'You're also not gettin' an ulcer on my watch, Sam. Eggs, bagels, Cohen's chicken treats, I don't care what, but you're eatin' somethin.' He gave him a gentle shove toward the table. 'Sit. What do you want?'

'A cup of fucking coffee!'

'Stop bein' a bitch,' Dean said, without heat.

Sam glared at him, eyes narrow and his mouth pulled tight; Dean raised a brow and leaned a hip against the counter and gazed steadily, silently, back, and a heartbeat later something crumpled in his little brother's face and the kid slumped against the edge of the table—head down, messy hair falling forward over his cheekbones. ‘Sorry,’ he said softly.

Dean tossed the dishtowel onto the counter. ‘What’s goin’ on with you, Sammy?’

Sam shook his head, not looking at him. ‘I’ve told you, I’m—’

‘Sam, you tell me one more time that you’re fine and I am gonna put you through a window, I swear to God,’ he said, calmly, and had the distinct satisfaction of catching the startled flash in his baby brother’s eyes as his head come up. ‘You’ve been a strung-out wreck for two weeks. And I’ve been givin’ you time to sort it, I have, but you’re worryin’ me, all right? I’m not blind. And no matter what you may think, little brother, I’m not stupid, either. You’re not stressed about a test and you’re not pissed about a hunt and you are _not fine_. So what the hell is wrong?’

The soft _tick-tick-tick_ of the wall clock was loud in the long silence that followed. Dean was about to throw up his hands and give up on the annoying, beloved little shit, or else take him out back and rub his face in the dirt until he opened up that pretty mouth and started talking, when Sam said, quietly, ‘Dean, I never think you’re stupid.’

Dean made an exasperated sound, low in his throat. ‘That’s what you’re takin’ away from this? Seriously?’

Sam looked down at his hands and was silent again. There was something . . . something _fragile_ , there in the kitchen between them, delicate as spun glass, as spun sugar. Dean said nothing, waited for Sam. Then, finally, so softly: ‘Dean, do you remember Palo Alto?’

The cogs in Dean’s memory turned, swiftly, efficiently, and slotted into place: California, four years past, vengeful spirit. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Just south of Cisco, right? Haunted amusement park. Awesome weather. Shitty coffee.’ _Seriously hot chick named Clara_. ‘You broke two fingers and cracked a rib, and Dad damn near split his skull open on that gravestone. What about it?’

Sam looked up at him, miserable and nervous and hopeful at once. ‘I—’

The kitchen door swung open. Bobby stomped in toward his phones muttering something about _goddamned yuppies and their goddamned cars that need parts I do not have,_ and Dean could feel it, the sudden shattering of whatever it was Sam had been about to tell him, and he knew—he _knew_ , bone-deep, the way he sometimes knew on a hunt that he had to go left instead of right, that there were three things hiding in the dark instead of two—that it was gone for good. Bobby was still grumbling, punching numbers irritably into his black phone; Cohen came in on Bobby’s heels and trotted immediately over to Sam, tail wagging; and the kid was sitting cross-legged on the floor to rub the big mutt’s belly half a heartbeat later, hair in his face, not looking at Dean, and yeah. It was gone. _Damn it._

Dean looked at him for a long moment anyway, then glanced over at Bobby, who was now rolling his eyes and muttering about being on hold. ‘Bobby, I’m gonna hit the hay for awhile, all right?’ he said, because catnap at the breakfast table or no, he suddenly felt too weary to stand. ‘I’ll start in on the engine block this afternoon.’

Bobby nodded, waved him off and started talking into the phone, and Dean trudged upstairs into the second-floor hall. He and Sam had shared the room at the end of it since the first time they’d stayed at here as kids, and Dean shut the door behind him and pitched facedown onto the soft double bed without bothering to take off his boots. _Palo Alto._ He rolled the name around in his brain for a moment, considering, but came up with nothing much. That case had been a nasty one, he remembered—four little boys dead in the dumpster on the park grounds before he and Sammy and John had managed to hunt down the supernatural son of a bitch responsible for it—but God knew that they’d handled worse, both before and since, and it had been four years ago, besides.

Sighing, Dean pushed his face into the warm pillows. There was something he was missing, clearly—something he didn’t remember, maybe, something from that hunt that had stayed with Sam all this time—but he was fucked if he knew what it was. He was still trying to make heads or tails of it when he fell asleep.

***

Dean woke, two hours later, from a dream of a ten-year-old Sam tossed in a dumpster, eyes open and blind, lithe little body twisted as terribly as the corpses of those kids had been in California. _Jesus Christ, is that what he’s been_—His heart felt like a goddamned jackrabbit in his chest, but he was tucked up now warm and cozy beneath the covers, his jeans unbuttoned and his boots on the floor; Sam was sitting on the bed beside him, back to the headboard, one hand stroking idly through Dean’s hair. John still bitched at his eldest for this sort of thing now and again, for the fact that Sam could manhandle him into bed or under the covers or onto a couch or out of half his clothes and Dean would sleep straight through it, never so much as peep, but it wasn’t anything Dean could help: something as soft as the creak of a floorboard could wake him, their father’s training had seen to that, but his body knew when he was safe, and Sam’s hands on him had never been anything but.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said, softly, before Dean was even half-awake. He scritched his blunt nails gently along Dean’s scalp, his fingers long and warm as they curved around his skull. ‘About the last few weeks. I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean to make you worry about me.’

Dean huffed out a sigh, didn’t bother to open his eyes. He was lying with his back to his brother, Sam's hip and leg pressed warm against one shoulder blade and along the length of his spine. ‘Well, you just stopped eatin’ and sleepin’ and behavin’ like any sort of rational human being,’ he murmured. ‘Can’t think what I was worried about.’

Sam said nothing. Dean didn’t ask him again what was wrong; that moment had come and gone and he knew it—had known it, in Bobby’s kitchen, and there wasn’t any way to get it back. But he was pretty sure he maybe knew now what the hell had been eating at his little brother for the past few weeks, and he was also pretty sure that it was something he could fix. ‘So Palo Alto, hmm?’

Sam’s hand stilled in his hair. He took a careful breath. 'Yeah.'

‘You’re never gonna end up like those kids, Sammy,’ he told him, quietly, seriously, feeling his brother’s heat bleeding steady and sure into his skin. ‘So stop thinkin’ about it, all right?’

 ‘. . . what?’

Dean wanted to sit up, wanted to be certain Sam was paying attention, that he was _listening_ , but he knew he wasn’t gonna be able to get this out if he were looking at his brother, any more than he’d ever managed to tell the kid he loved him anywhere but in the dark. ‘Those kids we found in California.’ And he _was_ pretty sure, he was, but it was still a complete and utter shot in the dark, this, a gamble based only on the dream he’d just woken from and a half-remembered fight between Sam and their father two weeks ago, right about the time the kid had started climbing the metaphorical walls. ‘What you told Dad a couple of weeks ago, that we could be dead on a hunt in a dumpster and he wouldn’t care? That’s not . . . I mean, first of all that’s not even _true_ , Sam, but those boys in Palo Alto didn’t have anyone lookin’ out for them, okay? Remember? Foster kids, down from that big group home in Cisco. And Sammy, that’s not . . . that ain’t you, little brother. I know we don’t have much, but you’ve got . . .’  He could not, for the life of him, wrap his tongue around the words. _Me_ , he wanted to say, _you’ve got me._ He cleared his throat. ‘Sam, I am never not gonna be here to look out for you,’ he managed. ‘Ever. So. ‘F that’s what’s been buggin’ you. Dumpsters and all. Never gonna happen. Quit worryin'.’

For a long moment, Sam was absolutely, utterly silent; Dean couldn’t even hear the soft rhythm of his breath, and he was getting ready to acknowledge that he had clearly fucked this up on a rather epic scale when, in a voice unsteady and as earnest as Dean had ever heard it, Sam said, softly, ‘I love you,’ because the kid could just _say_ shit like that, as easily as he could order Chinese food or ask Dean to grab his duffle. ‘Dean, I don’t—I don’t ever want you to forget that, okay? Please.’ His hand slipped to caress the back of Dean’s neck, warm and gentle and half a dozen things Dean should never, ever have let himself need, but frankly could no longer imagine being without. ‘I love you so much.’

It took Dean a minute to find his voice. ‘I know,’ he finally replied, and heard his brother’s snort, maybe a little shaky still but soft and fond, because if there were one thing that could always make the little geek smile, it was freakin’ _Star Wars._ He cleared his throat again, tried desperately to pull the scraps of his shredded manhood around himself again. ‘All right, Samantha,’ he continued. ‘We’re done feelin’ our feelings, okay? You gonna get some sleep?’

‘In awhile, maybe. Not too tired.’

'You eat?'

He could hear his little brother's smile in his voice, even if he couldn't see it. 'I had a fucking bagel, Dean. Get off my back.'

‘Yeah, well.’ Dean settled himself more comfortably, and if he pushed his head back against Sam’s hip a bit until the kid started running his fingers through his hair again, it’s not like there was anyone around to see. ‘Wake me up for lunch.’


	3. Three

**December 2001**

_Wherein Sam has a letter in his bag._

Dean slid into South Dakota on a sheet of ice and about six steps ahead of a blizzard, in a stolen car with crap tires, and a crap engine, and a crap heating system which had bailed on him somewhere south of Sioux City.

He’d left his father in Savannah a day and a half ago, with the understanding that he was to pick up Sam in Sioux Falls and pile him into the car and meet up with John again in Tucson by Wednesday, but the storm front barreling east from southern Colorado to Canada, and the deathtrap of car Dean had lifted to get himself up to South Dakota, had pretty much shot that plan to shit. Every local radio channel was urging folks to get inside and off the roads and pretty much prepare to stay there until Armageddon, and Dean figured that if people in _South Dakota_ were calling an incoming storm ‘epic,’ he’d be lucky if the roads were drivable in this damn Oldsmobile by the end of the week. Not that he was much complaining. He’d tagged along with John in November for an easy salt-and-burn in Vermillion a few days after his father had come back from wherever the hell it was he’d gone; but an ‘easy salt-and-burn’ had rapidly snowballed into a cold case spanning three decades, seven states, and nineteen corpses, and by the time they’d finally nailed the son of a bitch in a back alley in Georgia, it had been six weeks since Dean had seen his little brother, and that was about five weeks and six days longer than he’d planned.

So yeah. He wasn’t gonna bitch if they got stuck at Bobby’s for a couple of days.

It was already starting to snow by the time he got to Sioux Falls.

Bobby himself, hilarious down parka and all, was in the drive, tossing a duffel into the passenger side of his truck, lights on and engine running. Dean pulled up beside him and rolled down the window and holy _hell_ , that wind was cold. He'd thrown on a suit that morning before he headed out, on the very reasonable grounds that if he were pulled over for the exciting adventure of speeding-in-a-stolen-car, the FBI-agent-in-hot-pursuit card was gonna be a hell of a lot harder to play in jeans and flannel, and he'd pulled his father's jacket on when he'd lost the heat an hour ago, but he was still not entirely certain he was gonna be keeping all his fingers by the time he got warmed up.

‘Dumbass hunter got himself arrested down the road in Luverne,’ Bobby sighed, by way of greeting. Dean really very much wanted to make some sort of smartass comment about his pretty, puffy parka, but decided that discretion was the better part of not getting his teeth knocked in. Also, he was kinda jealous of that hood right now. Man, Bobby looked warm. ‘I’m gonna go bail his sorry ass out of jail before the creeper he’s been tracking disappears again for another seven years. Get yourself inside, kid. Left the back door unlocked for you. Food’s in the fridge; Sam’s conked out upstairs. You drink any of my whiskey, and I will tan your hide.’

Dean grinned at him. ‘Yessir.’

Bobby shut the passenger door. ‘I’ll be back in three hours. Don’t burn the house down while I’m gone, y'hear?’

‘Bobby, the storm—’

Bobby waved him off, unconcerned. ‘Been driving in blizzards since you were a baby, Dean. But if I leave my balls on the side of the road somewhere, I’ll be sure to call to let you know I can’t get back tonight. Now get moving.’

Dean snorted out a laugh, nodded, put the car back into gear, and pulled around the back; he was in Bobby’s back hall with his duffle less than twenty seconds later, because really, it was fucking  _cold_. The kiss of warm air on his face and throat and hands as he came in was the sweetest thing he'd felt in weeks. He reset the salt line behind him, threw the deadbolt, and then went quietly upstairs. He could hear Bobby's truck rumbling out of the drive out front.

It was dark up on the second floor, save for the spill of light coming out the half-open door of the guest room in the back. Dean went down the hall as quietly as he’d come up the stairs, sidestepping the creaky floorboard in the middle, and stuck his head around the door to find Sam at the desk beneath the eave, sound asleep, his cheek pillowed on an open book and a pencil balanced precariously in his lax fingers. His hair was a mess and there was drool at his mouth and he was snoring, softly, against the page, and Dean could feel his own heart give a faithful thump of love and lust and wanting all the same, because the kid was still, always, the most precious thing he knew. It took him a minute to realize that Sam was dressed in worn grey sweatpants and an old AC/DC tee, both of which he recognized as his own, and the soft twist of pleasure he felt at that sent a pleasant frisson of warmth all through him, head to frozen toes. _Missed you too, little brother_. He debated for a moment waking Sam up with a hand in his hair, then settled on closing the door softly at his back before dropping his bag on the wooden floor with a resounding  _thud_ , because no matter how long or how often the kid had been in Dean’s bed, Sam was still his baby brother, and there were certain standards Dean had to maintain. He grinned as Sam flailed awake, wildly, twisting around and reaching instinctively for a gun that wasn’t there, and then—

‘Fucking _Christ_ , Dean,’ he said, slumping forward, and rubbed at his eyes like a little kid. 'Jerk.'

‘Bitch,’ he replied, easily, as he strolled over to the desk and his adorably sleep-mussed little brother, who was trying so very hard to look annoyed as he scowled up at him but couldn't quite master his grin. ‘Whatcha wearin’ there, Sammy?’ he asked, and laughed as his brother glanced down at himself and then flushed from his throat to his hairline. Sam opened his  mouth to say something; Dean fisted a hand in his tee and pulled him to his feet and kissed him instead, and that was, as it turned out, pretty much his best idea ever, because Sam tasted like that ridiculous peppermint tea he liked, and his mouth was hot and sweet and utterly familiar, and as he made a soft sound in his throat and gripped Dean’s hips with strong hands and tugged him closer, Dean felt a flush of warmth through his bones that had little to do with lust and most everything to do with _wanted_ and _safe_ and _home_.

‘Hey,’ he murmured, and Sam grinned and pressed another quick, possessive lick into his mouth before ducking his head to tuck his face into the crook of Dean’s neck and sliding slim arms around him beneath the icy leather of his jacket. He was ridiculously warm, smelling of soap and cheap shampoo and _Sam_ , and Dean closed his eyes for a moment and just breathed him in, one hand coming up to tangle in the shaggy mess of his hair, the other arm sliding warm and tight around Sam’s narrow ribs. _Missed you,_ he wanted to say, though he could no more have gotten those words past his teeth than he could have stopped the snow outside from falling.

‘Missed you,’ Sam said, for both of them, softly, his voice muffled against Dean’s skin. ‘Gone too long.’

Dean ran a hand gently over his brother’s hair. ‘I know.’

‘Drive okay?’

‘Long. Boring.’ Dean rubbed his stubbled cheek against his brother’s smooth one in something he refused to admit was nuzzling. ‘Cold.’

‘’S cause apparently you never heard of a parka, dumbass,’ Sam murmured fondly, rubbing at his back. ‘You’re freezing, Dean, Jesus.’

‘Yeah, well. Was sorta hoping you’d help me warm up,’ he replied, and felt Sam snort a laugh before the kid lifted his head to look at him again, hazel eyes warm and wry.

‘You’re lucky I love you, you know that?’ he said, and Dean felt his heart give a painful _thump_ against his breastbone. ‘Seriously. I don’t care how hot you are, man; how you ever managed to pick up _anyone_ with that kind of cheesy crap just—’

Dean shut him up by the simple expedient of hauling him in close again and kissing him, and that seemed to work for both of them, so he saw no reason to stop anytime soon.  And there was, besides, something unexpectedly delicious about this, Sam barefoot and wrapped warm and sleepy around him in nothing more than sweats and a worn tee— _Dean’s_ sweats and worn tee—and him still in his jacket and that morning’s suit and bitterly cold from outside. Dean had no idea what it was, but he was way the hell on board with it, all the same. He let his hands stroke down his brother’s slim back and slide beneath the waistband of Sam’s pants, cupping his bare ass; Sam laughed in his throat and twisted but didn’t try to move away, just slipped his tongue into Dean’s mouth and let him warm his hands against his skin, and really, there was just entirely too much _vertical_ and _clothed_ going on here for Dean’s liking. Dean walked him backwards toward the bed, briefly tearing his mouth free to make short work of the kid’s tee shirt on the way, because he was a man of many important skills and enviable talents, and stripping his baby brother efficiently was one of them. He felt the backs of Sam’s knees hit the mattress and gave him a gentle shove to tumble him onto his back; Sam looked up at him, tousle-haired and grinning, as Dean shucked his leather jacket and suit jacket together and toed off his shoes and followed him down, and then he had his little brother’s wrists pinned just above his pretty head and was sucking hungrily again on his tongue, their thighs tangled and hips pressed in tight, one of Sam’s long legs sliding up to crook around Dean’s waist, and Jesus, it had been too fucking long since they’d had this.

‘Dean,’ Sam whispered, when they broke apart a little to breathe, a minute or an hour or three damn days later. The kid was already hard beneath him, his cock hot and thick against Dean’s thigh. ‘Dean, Bobby—’

‘Gone for three hours,’ he murmured, mouthing along the sharp edge of his jaw. down the long graceful curve of his throat. ‘Hunter in Luverne. Empty house.’ Dean slid his hands up a little so that their palms were pressed together, let Sam intertwine their fingers, tight and needy, and lost himself for several moments in marking up his brother’s collarbone, which had Sam whining prettily beneath him before Dean was halfway done. He very rarely left deliberate marks on his brother’s skin, because John was neither blind nor stupid, but John wasn’t here, and he wasn’t going to _be_ here, and it wasn't like Bobby was going to see him without a shirt. Dean indulged himself.

‘Missed you,’ Sam said again, voice soft and unsteady and already half-wrecked. ‘Missed _this_ , so much, Christ—’

Dean pulled his knees in and sat abruptly up, straddling his brother’s ribs, and undid his tie with a few swift, sharp pulls. Sam kept his hands where Dean had put them, looking up at him with a kiss-swollen mouth and eyes already blown dark with want, and there were a variety of levels, Dean decided, on which his baby brother should not have been legal. He ran the silk through his fingers, considering; he’d only meant to get out of his shirt, but—‘Give me your hands, Sammy,’ he ordered softly, and saw the pulse leap wildly in his brother’s throat. He grinned, let the cool slippery material trail across Sam’s chest, the soft skin of one arm. ‘C’mon,’ he said, more softly, still. ‘Hands,’ and Sam made a soft, helpless sound and lifted them. Dean lashed his brother’s wrists together with the smooth silk, one over the other, leaned forward to knot the other end of his tie around one of the spindles in the headboard. Sam gave an experimental tug at it as Dean sat back, succeeded only in tightening the material around his wrists, the blue a pretty contrast to his honey-colored skin.

‘All right?’ Dean asked softly, rubbing gently down his arms, and Sam smiled and stretched like a happy cat beneath him, and Dean bent again to kiss him, because he couldn’t _not_.

Fuck getting out of his shirt. Fuck getting out of his _clothes_. He dipped his tongue into the hollow of Sam’s throat, pushed himself down Sam’s slim body to suckle and bite at his flat nipples until they were swollen and red and his brother was panting, softly, beneath him. ‘So fuckin’ pretty, little brother,’ Dean murmured, pressing a line of slow, slow kisses, sloppy and warm, down over Sam’s ribs and stomach, making appreciative noises as he nosed at the goosebumps breaking out along Sam’s skin, traced the lines of muscle jumping beneath his mouth with his tongue. He tugged Sam’s pants down just a little, gripped his slim hips to keep him still.  Licked into his belly button, warm and wet, blew a puff of cool air across his skin. Sam’s hips twisted beneath his hands, and the kid made such a needy, helpless sound that Dean did it again, just to hear him. ‘Jesus, Sammy.’

Dean heard the creak of wood as Sam pulled against his tie. ‘Dean,’ he whispered. ‘Dean, c’mon, _please_ —’

‘Please what, baby boy?’ he asked softly, brushing his mouth along Sam’s stomach.

Sam gave a hilariously petulant whine. ‘You _know_ what, Dean; come on—’

Dean absolutely knew what, of course he knew what, but really, teasing his little brother was always awesome, and teasing his little brother when there was going to be orgasms involved was pretty much the best thing ever. ‘Might not,’ he murmured, voice muffled against Sam’s hot soft skin. He bit, not entirely gently, into the muscle above his hip, soothed it with his tongue. ‘Might think you want me to go away.’

‘Dean, I swear to God—’

Dean chuckled, low in his throat, and mouthed gently, briefly, over Sam’s cock through the soft cotton, was rewarded with a sweet, strangled sigh, then sat up a little to tug down the waistband of Sam’s sweats. Sam lifted his hips and then briefly bent his knees up toward his chest so that Dean could pull them off entirely; Dean tossed them somewhere off the bed, heedless of where they landed, because _naked Sam_ was always going to have his full attention, even if there were a goddamned dinosaur in the room. He ran calloused hands up the outsides of his little brother’s thighs, the skin silken soft over iron-hard muscle beneath. The kid’s cock was already slick at the head—he got so wet, so quickly, and Christ, Dean was never not going to find that hotter than fuck—and though Dean had spent most of today’s drive fondly imagining the many ways he’d been going to tease his brother sobbing and senseless, the only thing he wanted right now was the weight of that gorgeous cock on his tongue. He bent to brush a kiss across the still-pink scar below his brother’s left hip (Dean’s fault, always his fault, should have gotten to him faster) and licked his way in. Sam didn’t get off on rimming the way Dean did, never had, but approximately thirty-seven seconds of Dean’s mouth between his legs could make him forget how to speak English, and this evening Dean was frankly betting on no more than nine. He smiled at the ragged whimper Sam made as he nosed between his thighs and started to lap softly at his heavy sack, smoothing the silky wrinkled skin with his tongue. The smell and taste of him was musky and pungent and end-of-the-day strong, and the most delicious fucking thing Dean could imagine. ‘Good, Sammy?’ he murmured, and was rewarded with a half-sobbing moan. He sucked one of his brother’s balls into his mouth, rolled it on his tongue, let it slide out with a wet pop, did the same for the other, then rubbed a gentle, teasing knuckle into the damp hollow behind them both and licked his way up the shaft of Sam’s cock, getting it nice and wet, feeling his brother’s blood pumping against his tongue as he lapped at the thick vein on its underside. Brushing his lips across the head, not only slick now but leaking, he looked up with a long, leisurely sweep of his lashes, found Sam flushed and looking back with his lower lip bitten between his teeth. His cock jerked and spilled pre-come across Dean’s mouth, wet and warm, as their eyes met.

‘So,’ Dean murmured, licking the fluid off his lips, ‘fucking,’ he continued, as Sam pulled hard at the tie binding his hands and whimpered, eyes locked still on Dean’s, ‘pretty.’ He pressed a forearm down firmly across his brother’s hips and sank his weight onto it to keep him still, then ducked his head, swirled his tongue once, wetly, around the crown of Sam’s cock, and opened his throat and swallowed all of it down in one smooth, practiced slide.

Throat full, he held him there for a long moment, swallowing—once, twice, three times, four—and listened to Sam make sounds like he was dying; the kid’s thighs were tight as a vice against his ribs, his legs wrapped around Dean’s back, and he was trying desperately to buck, to arch, to _move_ , but he had no possible way to get any leverage, and Dean wasn’t about to give him any. He pulled off enough to let just the head of Sam’s cock sit sweet and heavy in his mouth, worked his tongue against the bundle of nerves beneath it, and sucked hard enough that he felt his cheeks hollow; slicking up two fingers in the sloppy mess of saliva on his chin, he pushed them up hard inside of his brother, twisting, knowing just how to stretch him, just where to press. Sam fucking _keened_ , head thrashing, but with his hands bound above him and his hips pinned to the mattress, there was nothing he could do besides take it, and it was maybe another minute more before he was coming, on the kind of utterly broken moan that he gave up only when he was tied down and spread open, and that Dean loved more than just about any other sound in the world. Dean swallowed the thick wet spurts pumping across his tongue, scrubbed the pads of his fingers against his brother’s sweet spot to coax the last hot pulses from his slit, and kept it up, suckling gently, until he knew he was about to tip Sam over the edge into too much, until he could feel Sam’s heavy cock finally starting to soften on his tongue. He slid his fingers free, carefully, let his brother’s cock go with one last, possessive lick, then pulled himself up over the kid’s shaking body, twined his hands in his hair to hold him still and kissed him hard and sweet and deep with a semen-slick mouth. Sam choked on a sound low in his throat and opened up for him, licking the taste of himself from Dean’s lips and teeth and tongue, and it was hot and filthy and wet and lasted halfway into forever, and Jesus _Christ_ , Dean needed to come, because he was about thirty seconds away from crawling out of his own goddamned skin. He kissed his brother again, close-mouthed, once, twice, then rolled off him, briefly, to get rid of his own clothes. Sam made something that sounded very like a whimper.

‘Not goin’ anywhere, Sammy,’ Dean murmured, stripping off his shirt and tee and starting in on his pants. ‘Jus’ gimme a minute. Where’s the—’

‘N-nightstand,’ his brother managed, and let his eyes flutter shut, head tilted back on his pillow. ‘ _Jesus_ , Dean.’

Dean grinned as he kicked off his pants and pulled off his boxers and socks and leaned over to yank the drawer open and rummage out the lube. ‘Been missin’ me, little brother?’ He swung a leg back over him to kneel between his spread thighs, slicked his fingers up as he looked down at Sam—pliant and blissed-out and _tied to the goddamned headboard_ beneath him, bruises darkening along his collarbone, cock lying red and wet and soft against one thigh. The sudden punch of lust that hit him behind the ribs was hard and sweet and sent a hot flush prickling through his skin. He leaned forward and caught his weight on one hand, bent to bite gently at the side of his brother’s neck, slipped his lube-slick hand back behind Sam’s balls, two thick fingers sliding along the crack of his ass and then pushing up inside him again as Sam bent his knees up toward his chest. It was entirely too soon for his little brother to get hard again, but the sound that was punched out of him was pure arousal, all the same. Dean sank his teeth into his own lip as he pumped his hand and a moment later slid a third finger in with the first two; this was going to be one of the fastest and most piss-poor preps in their personal history, but his cock was so hard it was aching and he couldn’t—he needed—

‘Dean,’ Sam whispered, locking his ankles in the small of Dean’s back. ‘Dean, I don’t need it; come on.’

‘Don’t’ —he sucked in a ragged breath— ‘don’t wanna hurt you, sweetheart. Don’t—’

‘Not gonna. Come _on_.’ Sam tightened his legs to pull him closer, and Dean slid his wet fingers free and slicked them over his cock, lined himself up and rocked into his brother on a deep, steady thrust, knocking a moan from both their chests. Sam had been stretched only a little on Dean’s fingers, but he was dripping with lube and his entire body was so utterly relaxed that Dean fucked in smooth and easy all the same, no work at all, only a tight sweet slippery slide as his brother opened up around him.

He pressed his face into the curve of Sam’s neck, panting with want, feeling Sam spread out warm and wet and so very willing beneath him, strong legs wrapped around his waist, and he didn’t get in even a dozen hard thrusts before he came, pleasure breaking over and through him like a crackling tide, washing every last thought from his brain, from his body, besides _Sam_.

It had been a goddamn long six weeks.

He came back to himself to the sound of Sam’s voice, ragged and sweet and murmuring his name, and to one of Sam’s big hands cupping the back of his head and the other rubbing gently along his shoulder blades. It took his pleasure-mazed brain a moment to suss out what was wrong with this particular scenario, and then he snorted against his brother’s sweat-damp skin.

‘ . . . fucker,’ he murmured, and Sam’s chuckle slid over him like honey.

‘Not my fault you can’t tie a knot, man.’

Dean bit, not gently, and Sammy yelped and smacked him across the back of the head—weakly, because Dean was pretty sure the kid’s muscles weren’t in much better shape than his own right now. He contemplated shifting his hips to pull out, but that sounded like an awful lot of work, and he was really quite comfy where he was, cock still snugged all warm and wet inside his baby brother, body lax in the familiar cradle of Sam’s arms. Someday—if he ever, you know, got hit by a witch’s curse and turned into a girl— he was going to tell his brother how safe he always felt like this (how safe, how cared for, how _known_ ) but that wasn’t going to happen while he still had appreciable levels of testosterone in his body.

‘ . . . ’m not movin’,’ he announced instead.

‘Good,’ Sam replied, softly, and a moment later started to knead gently at Dean’s back. Dean made a soft, deliriously happy sound that he really didn’t think he could be in any way held accountable for, because Sam didn’t always do this, and Dean could never bring himself to ask for it, but he would have walked across hot coals to get it any day of the week. ‘Wasn’t gonna let you.’

Dean slid his hands and forearms beneath Sam’s shoulders in what was absolutely and very definitely not a hug, pressed his face deeper into the curve of his neck and drifted for a little while, utterly content, muscles that had already gone lax from orgasm starting to loosen into jelly under his little brother’s calloused hands.

‘Such a fuckin’ hedonist,’ Sam murmured, affectionately.

Dean didn’t bother to open his eyes. ‘Don’t know what that is, but I’m kickin’ your ass for it in the mornin’,’ he promised, voice muffled, and felt the curve of his brother’s smile against his scalp. Sam gave his shoulder a gentle shove.

‘Come on. Can’t breathe. Get off of me.’

‘Hgggn,’ he protested, articulate-like.

Sam laughed and pushed harder at his shoulder. ‘Dean. Get off me and get on your stomach. Your muscles are like pretzels, man. I’ve got some oil in my bag.’

Dean picked his head up to look down his brother, trying very hard not to look like a hopeful puppy; from the way Sam was looking back up at him, amused and fond, he wasn’t doing that great a job. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything particularly manly, and probably stupid, his brother pulled him down into a kiss that, for all the kid’s very talented tongue, was filled with far more sweetness than it was with lust, and Dean felt his heart seizing, gently, in his chest. Sam smiled up at him. ‘Move,’ he whispered, sliding his hands down Dean’s sides to grip his hips and push, gently, and Dean did, pulling out on a warm mess of semen that meant he was very, very definitely going to be making an early morning trip to the washing machine with this blanket tomorrow. Sam didn’t seem particularly concerned. He stretched, comfortably, as Dean flopped down beside him, and then rolled off the bed to his feet; Dean watched him pad over to his duffel on the other side of the room, apparently utterly unselfconscious about the fact that he was naked and looking both thoroughly used and very well fucked. And though Dean had just come hard enough to white out his vision not ten minutes ago, he felt his stomach tighten a little and his cock give an interested, mildly painful twitch all the same.

‘Tease,’ he muttered, and got a sweet, wicked grin back over Sam’s shoulder for his trouble. It wasn’t fair that he _dimpled_ like that, Jesus; there oughta be a law. He pushed his face into the pillow, inhaling the scent of Sam’s soap and skin and cheap shampoo. God, he had missed him.

He cracked an eyelid after another moment of silence and no Sammy in his space, found his brother rolling a bottle gently back and forth over one of the radiator pipes.

‘Sammy, the hell you doin’ over there?’

‘Heating up the oil. You’ll thank me in a minute. Shut up.’

It was considerably longer than the promised minute before Dean heard his brother moving around behind him to the foot of the bed, but he decided he was gonna let it slide. Sam gripped his ankles and spread his legs, enough for the kid to settle himself comfortably between them near Dean’s feet; there was the sound of him slicking up his hands and a sharp, spicy scent that Dean couldn’t identify. ‘You owe me, like, six blowjobs for this, man,’ his brother informed him, and then hands that were strong and slippery and warm— _warm_ , oh, God, impossibly and wonderfully warm—were sliding around his left calf, thumbs digging in to get at the knots two days of driving, a night in the car, and a long hard hunt had put there. Dean felt a sound punched out of him that Sam was likely not going to let him forget anytime soon, judging by the soft chuckle at his back. But Jesus _Christ_ , his brother had good hands.

‘Eight,’ Dean managed after a moment.

‘Hmm?’

‘Eight blowjobs,’ he said, and Sam laughed, warm and low and happy, caressed his ankle bone with a thumb, let long fingers slide up to knead gently, briefly, at the tender muscles on either side of his knee, returned to the stiff muscles in his calf.

‘Tell me about Georgia?’ he asked.

Eyes closed, cheek pillowed on his crossed arms, Dean told him about Georgia, as Sam worked his way up his left leg and down his right, thorough and deliberate and slow. He felt sleepy and content; Christ, he felt _safe_ , tucked away like this with his brother in a familiar, cozy little haven that was warm and bright and, for the moment, just and entirely theirs. Sam asked him questions now and again as he talked, bent now and again to brush his mouth across a scar, a bruise, the crook of Dean’s knee, the curve of a hip. Dean had been planning to tell him what he knew of the hunt John had taken off for in Tucson, but he lost the plot for awhile when Sam shifted up to straddle his hips and run slick hands up his back, thumbs digging with perfect, crushing pressure into the long muscles on either side of his spine, and again later when Sam went to work on the sides of his neck, because the kid’s fingers were strong and certain and fucking _perfect_ , and eventually Dean realized that he’d given up on talking entirely in favor of just lying where he was and making soft, low sounds in his throat, and he was pretty much okay with that, too.

Sam seemed to have no complaints. Quiet now, he worked the tension slowly out of Dean’s shoulders, gentle with the still-tender joint of his left one, out of his arms, out of each of his fucking _hands_ , Jesus, long fingers pressing in carefully between the delicate bones, before returning for a little while to his back—no particular pressure anymore, just stroking, easy and warm and possessive, like Dean was something to be cherished, something that was _his_. Those paws of his were big enough to span Dean’s ribs when Sam spread his fingers, and it felt ridiculously, impossibly good. ‘Wish you’d let me do this more often,’ Sam said, so softly Dean wasn’t entirely certain it was meant for him.

Dean’s _Jesus, Sammy, you can do this anytime you damn well want_ came out more along the lines of _hnnnnnng_ , but Sam seemed to understand him, all the same.

Sam ran a gentle hand down his spine. ‘I mean take care of you,’ he said, as softly, and before Dean could reply to that he went up on his knees and wrapped a big warm palm around one of Dean’s hips. ‘Roll over for me,’ he said.

Dean had been hard again since his brother’s hands slid strong and slippery up his back, and as he rolled onto his back he was utterly unsurprised to find that Sam was, as well. He tugged his brother down on top of him, pulling his own knees up so that Sam could settle easily into the cradle of his hips, both of their cocks trapped between their flat stomachs and sliding hot against one another. Sam braced himself on one forearm and wrapped an oil-slick hand around them both, and then fused his mouth to Dean's, and if the orgasm that knocked the breath out of Dean’s body several moments thereafter wasn’t as viciously strong as the first one had been, it was infinitely sweeter, a warm low impossibly long roll of pleasure beneath his skin, his hands sliding up Sam’s bare back to fist in his hair, pulling tight, and his brother’s breathless, broken _Dean_ huffing across the side of his neck as Sam came a moment after, hot and wet between them.

The room was still for a long while afterward, the only sounds the thumping of the radiator in the corner, the occasional creak as the house settled, somewhere on the floor below. Sam kept his face tucked against Dean’s neck, mouth lazy and warm against the soft stubbled skin beneath his jaw. Dean stroked absently though his hair with one hand and along his spine with the other, and was strongly considering just falling asleep like this, cozy and warm beneath all this heavy boneless _Sam_ he had, but he was eventually forced to acknowledge that the warm slick splatter between them was drying to a sticky cold itchy mess, and that he didn’t much relish the thought of soaking dried come off his cock tomorrow before he was able to take a piss. He rolled them both so that Sam was on his back beside him, kissed his mouth when the kid made a sound of quiet protest and reached for Dean with sleepy hands, and got out of bed on legs that were still not entirely steady. He cleaned himself up with a warm wet washcloth at the bathroom sink down the hall, padded back to the bed to do the same for his barely conscious and hence now thoroughly useless baby brother, checked the runes at the window out of habit, locked the door, turned out the light, and then manhandled Sam beneath the soft striped sheets and heavy covers and crawled in beside him, both of them naked and warm and content. Sam slid down in the bed far enough that he could tuck his head to Dean’s shoulder, tangled their legs together beneath the blankets and burrowed in, clingy and warm; Dean ran a gentle hand through his brother’s mop of hair and let him. ‘You’re like a freakin’ baby monkey, you know that?’ he murmured, fingers tangling in the curls at his brother’s nape. ‘Gonna take you to the zoo one of these days, let you hang out with all your monkey friends.’

‘Take _you_ t’ the zoo,’ Sam yawned, scrubbing his cheek against Dean’s shoulder, and if there were anything more to that epically snappy comeback, Dean was clearly going to have to wait for it until morning, because his brother was already more than half asleep. The kid pushed his face into his collarbone and mumbled, ‘Can’ go zoo anyway. Goin’ Cal’—he yawned, burrowed closer—‘Cal’fornia.’

‘Yeah?’ Dean bit back a smile. Shit Sammy Said While Sleepy had been one of his favorite forms of entertainment ever since they were children; three heartbeats from sleep, and the kid never had the first damn clue what was coming out of his mouth, apparently now including titles to Led Zeppelin songs. Maybe he and Dad had managed to pass on some sort of good musical taste on the kid after all. ‘Why you goin’ to California, little brother?’

‘Got the . . . the thing,’ he replied. ‘Last week. Said I could come. So you gotta come too, okay?’ Sam cuddled closer, his arm tightening around Dean’s ribs. ‘Don’ wanna leave you.’

Dean stroked his brother’s hair again, amused. ‘Goin’ to California. Awesome. You got it.’

‘Don’ tell Dad.’ Sam was heavy in his arms now, sleep stealing up over him like a blanket. ‘He’ll try t’ . . . t’ keep you . . .’

Dean snorted, softly, and kissed the top of his brother’s tousle-haired, crazy head. ‘You are makin’ zero sense, kiddo. Go to sleep.’

Sam nodded, hair soft as silk against Dean’s skin. ‘Love you,’ he murmured. ‘Love you so much.’ He sighed. ‘Don’ make me go alone.’


End file.
